Good morning, Mr President

Barack Obama has been re-elected. Millions of Americans will be congratulating themselves while millions of others will be wondering what went wrong. Very few understand the reality that votes no longer matter: the winner of any election will be the candidate most likely to deliver what the Secret Service (intelligence services in the UK) currently want.

Obama’s masterstroke was the ‘promise’ of an executive order to fulfil the stalled Cybersecurity Act just before the election. Romney’s failure was business distaste for the Act.

We’ve had it in the UK for decades. A politically astute socialist turned socialite stayed in power for a decade on the promise of delivering centrally controlled national ID cards. When public distaste became overwhelming he was replaced by Brown – but as soon as it was clear that Brown couldn’t deliver a pizza, he too was dumped.

Enter the genius of Cameron. Tell the people you will roll back the database state while telling the intelligence agencies you will do no such thing. Curtail RIPA (well, limit the snooping capabilities of the jobsworth man-from-the-council while leaving the rest intact), but keep the Digital Economy Act and deliver on promises with the new Communications Act.